August 30, 2012

Racists deny playing race card

By Tim Wise[Republicans] insist that the left has “racism on the brain,” that we “see racism everywhere,” and that by accusing conservatives of this thing, we only indicate that it is we who are really racist. Because, see, if you see racism, it’s because you are race-obsessed, and if you are race-obsessed, it’s because you are the racist. But as for them? Nah, they’re just happy-go-lucky, colorblind pixies who throw peanuts at black people while calling them animals.

I wish I was being silly and hyperbolic here, but I’m not.

And so, for instance, Newt Gingrich seriously thinks we’re the ones who are racist, when we call out the racial undertones of the totally inaccurate, utterly dishonest welfare commercials being run by the Romney campaign. Apparently, to Gingrich, it is only liberals and people on the left who think of black folks when the word welfare is used. Oh yes, because conservatives would never be thinking of that. Like, when Ronald Reagan embellished that story about the “welfare queen” driving the Cadillac to the welfare office in Chicago and getting hundreds of thousands of dollars in benefits thanks to dozens of fake names, he wasn’t picturing a black woman and didn’t intend for you too either. Even though the story the legend was based on involved a black woman on the city’s south side, who was actually guilty of only about $8000 in fraud, he wasn’t even talking about Linda Taylor, the black woman in question. No, he was imagining a white woman in Northbrook, swinging by to pick up her AFDC check before heading off to meet her tennis pro, scamming the system at the expense of all the hard-working black taxpayers in the Cabrini Green and Robert Taylor homes. Who could possibly have gotten that twisted? I mean yes, since the story was essentially fictitious, he could have made the fictional woman from a whiter place like West Virginia or Nebraska or Vermont, but the fact that he didn’t, and instead picked a big city with a large black population was merely coincidental. And if you don’t understand that, it’s because you’re race-obsessed.

And when Reagan made up yet another story about some “strapping young buck” buying T-bone steaks with food stamps, he didn’t specify the “buck’s” race, so if you see a black man in your mind’s eye, it’s obviously because you are the one with the problem. Why, for all you know, when Reagan said “buck,” he might have been referring to a large deer. You obviously have race on the brain!Wise presents several recent examples of Republican racism, then continues:This is the level of intellectual dishonesty to which the right is willing to stoop. So long as they never actually mention a person’s race, nothing they say about them can be considered racist. So if they call Obama a foreigner, it’s not intended to push racial buttons, because there are lots of white foreigners, and hell, they could be accusing him of being from Lichtenstein. If they call him a “lyin African,” it’s not intended to push racial buttons because there are white Africans, like Charlize Theron and Dave Matthews. If they send around pictures of him dressed like a pimp, it’s not about race, because there are white pimps, like James O’Keefe. And if they say that the only way to get promoted in the Obama Administration is by “hating white people” (as Limbaugh said back in 2009), it’s not because they’re trying to scare white people about the black president. It’s because they just really need you to know how much Tim Geithner hates your cracker ass. And when they make a button that asks whether we can “still call it the White House” if Obama wins, that’s not a racial thing. It’s just that they heard that Michelle Obama is partial to soft pastels, and ya know, might want to repaint the place.

And if they portray Obama as a monkey or a chimpanzee, or even call him “the first monkey president,” that’s not because they’re trying to play along with the long-standing racist association between black people and apes. And anyway, everybody likes monkeys and they’re known to be really smart: which is actually what a conservative talk show host who recently called the president a monkey and e-mailed a picture of him as a monkey said in her defense. Because as someone who is militantly opposed to President Obama and everything he stands for, she nonetheless really wants you to know how smart she thinks he is.He concludes:Look, this is simple, really. The reason we say political appeals that rely on images of welfare recipients are about priming racial resentment and even racism, is because study after study after study after study after study after study says they are. The actual research, by actual scholars, indicates quite clearly that this is the effect of such tactics. Now granted, maybe Republicans didn’t know that (bullshit), because, after all, conservatives don’t read social science literature, because it has that word “science” in it, and science is scary and makes baby Jesus cry. But the bottom line is, we on the left are not race-obsessed. We’re fact obsessed. We have a thing about evidence. You should try it, really. It’ll be OK, and God won’t punish you for your lack of simple faith.Comment: While only a few conservatives express their racism openly, many of them tolerate racism in their midst. If they're not racists themselves, they're racism enablers, a trivial distinction.

Thats a somewhat watered down rationale for racism Dmarks. It is true that racism exists from all sides in all races, but it so happens that the ruling income class and the ruling systems of authority in the United States with political power, jobs, opportunity and education happen to be conservative Anglo Americans, and it is not because minorities haven't tried, they do, and with few isolated intances, they break the racial barriers. You seem to have this mindset that liberal racism equates conservative racism whilst from the get go, there are more superstitious religious racist coming from the right. Is there such a thing as a conservative athiest? Tell us?

I am not defending racism, so I don't need to feel any sort of "rationale' for it.

And in the example I gave, it was a liberal white person, a member of the ruling class, who was the racist.

"You seem to have this mindset that liberal racism equates conservative racism whilst from the get go, there are more superstitious religious racist coming from the right."

Aside from your use of "superstitious" likely to mean a religion you don't share, there are indeed major examples of strong religion-based racism on the Left, starting with Minister Farrakhan and his supremacist "Nation of Islam". Or the explicitly racist rantings of Revs' Jackson and Sharpton, both definitely liberals, both definitely having a lot of influence, and both racists.

Our own President approved enough of Farrakhan's ideology to travel a long distance to go to a rally to glorify Farrakhan.... In fact, he was an organizer.

"Is there such a thing as a conservative athiest? Tell us?"

There are indeed conservatives of this religion. Objectivists, Randists, and Libertarians are quite often Atheist. Ayn Rand herself was a devout Atheist, and her most devoted followers tend to choose her faith also.

And of course there are liberals of other non-Atheist faiths. Great ones, too. Such as Dr. King, who was very well steeped in the "superstition" you deride, and was all about breaking barriers.

Overall, Tim Wise's piece is extremely sloppy, and makes goofs such as in this paragraph:

"So if they call Obama a foreigner..."

Most foreigners in the US are not black Africans. No points for Wise.

He gets a point on the lyin African one: most Africans are black. He also gets a point on the pimp one.

Reagan's welfare queen was real. It is in fact his critics who are being racist, by assuming that all people on welfare are black... when in fact most are white.

This is a matter of crying wolf on dog whistles, to the point whenever anyone makes a general criticism of a certain group, if there happens to be a few blacks in this group, this person is accused of being an anti-black racist. People like Wise who do this are certainly not fact-obsessed.

Where are the ruling liberals in the media and politics Dmarks? Obama? Obama is more centrists and moderate than Republicans want to admit. Therefore, your explanations and accounts for liberal racism is very shallow and pretentious. The ruling conservatives have controlled the media, Hollywood and the government for decades via the religious idiots of America. Reagan, Bush and now Rmoney will use them to attain the Republican votes, just wait and see, but as always, a Republican president will drop the religious agenda as soon as he enterw the Whitehouse.

Anon: Measured from the center, Obama is a liberal, for sure. He isn't as hard left as many on the hard left want him to be, granted. Then there is his Vice President, another liberal. And one of the houses of Congress, with Harry Reid as the top dog.

Anyway, as Obama is a leftist, your "therefore" argument makes less sense.

"The ruling conservatives have controlled the media, Hollywood and the government for decades via the religious idiots of America"

The only thing this proves is your own religious bigotry. Liberals control most of the media in the US, and most of Hollywood. They control the government in half of the states, and the Federal government half the time... and they do right now.

Explain how DW Griffith was a liberal and how the populist Rush Limbaugh is a liberal Dmarks? Explain how you do not see fat Mexican, Black or Native men shout racists obsceneties at women calling them sluts on a national radio program? Explain how you have complete networks of paper, internet and television programming that twist facts and blatantly lie about national policy Dmarks? Where are your larger than life liberal media in film with Johnny Depp being a full blooded, enrolled traditional native American after Jay Silverheels? Where in Hollywoods history, including today, do you not see a push, rationale and glorification for war and right wing patriotism with military reality shows? Where is this liberal media you keep hidden in your secret mental chambers of an almighty left wing controlled Federal Communications Corporation that allows an ALL American Indian Channel versus a History Channel that produces a "America: The Story of Us" where there is not one "liberal" story of a native leader like Geronimo and plight of trying to defend his homeland and his WAY OF LIFE? Tell us Dmarks, where is a professional and college sports team aired weekly that exists where minorities dress up like savage puritians and Christians that kill Indians for your bastard add water, reinvented culture? Where is this LIBERAL media? And your Obama channels of him being a leftist and liberal is a make believe invention. All the socialist programs of FDRs era helped raise and fund your conservative parents and grandparents to be successful people in business, education and housing when minorities were being lynched, jailed or killed, but now Obama is a socialist?

Farrakhan is on the far right, not the left at all. The Nation of Islam did ally itself with the Klan after all, refused to take part in civil rts mvmt, and murdered Malcolm X. It's actually pretty racist of d to assume all Blacks are automatically leftist.

Also, Bernero is not remotely liberal either. Left wing racism tends to be either condescending or assuming western civilization is the only true civilization. Right wing is all that, plus violence and extermination and race baiting.

"Explain how DW Griffith was a liberal and how the populist Rush Limbaugh is a liberal Dmarks?"

Why should I? Racism exists on the right as well as the left. That is obvious. It makes no sense to deny that there are racist on the right as it does to deny there are racists on the left.

"Explain how you do not see fat Mexican, Black or Native men shout racists obsceneties at women calling them sluts on a national radio program?"

You get thin liberals on major national TV stations calling women "c*nts". See Bill Maher.

"Explain how you have complete networks of paper, internet and television programming that twist facts and blatantly lie about national policy Dmarks?"

Because we have the First Amendment, where people can express their views even if someone consider it "lying". So that is why we get MSNBC doing what you are describing.

"Where are your larger than life liberal media in film with Johnny Depp being a full blooded, enrolled traditional native American after Jay Silverheels?"

Because most liberals do not care about this issue, just as most conservatives do not.

"Where in Hollywoods history, including today, do you not see a push, rationale and glorification for war and right wing patriotism with military reality shows?"

So many of these questions are like shooting fish in a barrel. Military reality shows? You are asking where we do not see these? How about "just about all the time"? Shows like "Stars Earn Stripes" are a tiny minority of the shows. If you are arguing that shows like this prove conservative media, then the fact that they are so rare is evidence, in your argument, of liberal media.

"Where is this liberal media you keep"

The leftist, liberal media dominates TV, for one thing. Where there is only one conservative network, and several liberal ones.

Since the Obama administration controls the FCC, it is in fact left-wing controlled at this time

"....that allows an ALL American Indian Channel versus a History Channel"

What ARE you smoking? The FCC, right or left, is not in a position to "allow" channels.

"Tell us Dmarks, where is a professional and college sports team aired...."

Ask the liberals that ignore the issues of Chief Illinewek and Chief Wahoo.

"Where is this LIBERAL media?"

Turn on the TV. The fact is you are quite confused on this.

"And your Obama channels of him being a leftist and liberal is a make believe invention."

All I do is look at his record, and ocmpare it to the center of politics. In fact, Obama has one of the most strongly leftwing voting records. This is fact, not my opinion.

"All the socialist programs of FDRs ....but now Obama is a socialist?"

You have me confused with another, which perhaps might explain why your post is so addled and drifting at times. I have never called Obama a socialist. Left wing, liberal sometimes means socialist. But the two terms do not mean the same thing.

"It's actually pretty racist of d to assume all Blacks are automatically leftist."

I never said they were. I was talking about certain individuals, not generalizing on race.

"Also, Bernero is not remotely liberal either."

Correction: Bernero is a liberal/left firebrand. He ran on a strongly liberal platform when he ran for governor a couple of years ago. He had appeared a lot as a major talking head on a liberal national TV network.

"Left wing racism tends to be either condescending or assuming western civilization is the only true civilization. Right wing is all that, plus violence and extermination and race baiting."

Left wing racism includes that too. Very much so. One recent example of race bating was leftist journalist "Toure" bashing Herman Cain as being a typical black sexual predator. Left wing racists have killed more people over their race or ethnicity than right wing ones have. Far more, in fact.

I love that image, only because it's so racist that it's not even anywhere close to geographically correct. That particular chieftain is from Papua New Guinea. I'll put it as a new level of "Teabonics", which is defined as "when you think Mexicans should leave if they don't speak American gooder".

Toure was raising something that existed in his mind only. He was bashing Cain while slyly trying to shift it to others. It did not work.

The liberal media is reality, when you look at most TV news organizations. Some on the hard left don't like it that some leftist media outlets aren't as left-wing as they are, so they claim that these leftist media outlets aren't liberal. And this is where the problem comes in.

" conservative corporations ultimately decide what appears in print or on the air."

In the case of liberal corporations, they decided what appears in print or on the air for the liberal media.

It doesn't matter whether Touré's beliefs are in his own mind only, DMarks. He was explaining how America viewed the Cain scandal. Not how he himself viewed it.

There's no way in hell that calling other Americans racist is itself "racist." The accusation may be true or false, but it says nothing about the accuser's beliefs to make it. You remain flatly wrong on that point.

More important, Verg Bernero and Touré are about the only examples of "liberal racism" you've offered. In contrast, I've offered dozens of examples of conservative racism. I could offer hundreds more if I wanted to. You lose on that point, badly.

Few if any corporations are "liberal," since they're dominated by conservative executives, boards, and shareholders. I've explored the "Myth of the Liberal Myth" at length in the aforementioned posting. Until you can challenge the claims in that posting, you lose on this point too.